Reading, listening to, and questioning America... from the southern Great Plains

Your deepening neuroses are justified by this news

The damn bugs -- killer flu, eboli, whatever -- are raining down on us from above! Don't go out unless you're wearing hazmat gear, okay? A group at Georgia Tech working with Athanasios Nenes, an atmospheric chemist, has confirmed what has been suspected for years.

They made multiple flights and were able to collect air samples from
about 30,000 feet over both land and sea. The samples turned out to
contain some fungi — and a lot of bacteria. "And this was a big surprise
because we didn't really expect to see that many bacteria up there,"
Nenes says. ...NPR

Oh, don't worry. Chances are you'll be just fine. Maybe.

Okay. Go ahead. Worry.

Back on the ground, other members of the research team used genetic
techniques to identify the bacteria. One of them was Georgia Tech
microbiologist Kostas Konstantinidis.

"We
were able to see at least close to 100 different species, of which
about 20 were in most samples," Konstantinidis says. Some of those 100
species were from the ocean. Others came from the soil and from fresh
water.

There were even some E. coli. But
Konstantinidis says he's not sure yet whether it's a type that makes
people sick. The sample is still being analyzed. "My feeling is it will
also include pathogens," he says, "but we don't have direct evidence
about that yet."

He says if pathogens are getting swept up into the atmosphere, it might possibly have implications for the way diseases spread. ...NPR